Australian SAS officers knew about weapons planted on dead Afghans and did not stop it, report says

Some Australian SAS officers knew that soldiers under their command were using 'throwdowns' — planting weapons on dead Afghan civilians to portray them as combatants — but did nothing to stop the unlawful practice, a previously unpublished military report has said.

The report, whose executive summary was posted online this week, is a 2021 investigation by the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) into the 'cultural context' of the special operations command. It is scathing about the 'breakdown of command' and the erosion of military discipline during special forces operations in Afghanistan, which it said resulted in 'episodes of potential and actual egregious behaviour'.

An earlier IGADF report, the Brereton Inquiry, made public in 2020, found credible information that Australian special forces personnel murdered 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners. But the Brereton report largely exonerated officers, saying the 'criminal behaviour' it uncovered 'was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed at patrol commander level'. Patrol commanders in the Australian SAS are not commissioned officers; they are typically corporals or sergeants.

The newly released report was commissioned after the Brereton findings in 2021 by the former defence force chief and SAS officer Angus Campbell. It found that some SAS officers knew about alleged 'unlawful behaviour' and did not act to stop it.

The report said: 'Officers with actual knowledge of misconduct in-theatre, including notably the use of throwdowns to effect fraudulent reporting, or rumours of misconduct, did not take effective action to investigate and address these issues.'

The unlawful behaviour identified by the IGADF revealed 'a breakdown of command' and ineffective leadership, the report said. It added that the proper functioning of the ADF as a hierarchical system relies on the enforcement of rules at all levels, and that a failure to do so has a corrosive effect on behaviours, morale and ultimately military discipline.

According to the report, SAS officers allowed the regiment to develop an 'uncontrolled warrior ethos'. The long, grinding nature of the Afghan conflict, to which a small cohort of SAS soldiers were repeatedly sent on dangerous, corrosive deployments, also contributed to moral injury and impaired decision-making, it said.

The report said the excessively secretive and insular nature of the SAS also contributed to worsening standards, as did an 'inversion' of the chain of command, where senior non-commissioned officers were able to dominate officers who were, ostensibly, their superiors.

This resulted in junior officers being effectively subservient to non-commissioned officers, occupying a position the report described as 'learned helplessness'.

The report cited the fact that SAS soldiers were consistently allowed to drink alcohol while on deployment in Afghanistan — in defiance of orders imposed on others — which 'sent the strong signal to those involved that the rules did not apply to them'.

Soldiers also wrote false reports of their actions on the battlefield, the report said. Variations of a standard phrase, 'manoeuvring to a position of tactical advantage', were used with such regularity to describe civilian 'squirters' as direct participants in hostilities, justifying engagement under the rules of engagement, that the expression lost meaning, the report noted.

The report's executive summary says there was 'a significant failure of good leadership and effective command' across the SAS commanders, and that the reporting systems designed to prevent misconduct had become 'depleted and largely unreliable', giving officers 'a false level of assurance'. It said the culture of the Special Operations Task Group was not the cause of misconduct but created an environment which enabled misconduct by a few to occur.

Defence had previously refused to release the report despite it being the subject of freedom of information requests and an attempt to force its disclosure in the Senate.